


Playing Wonder Woman

by itsfreerealestate



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Between Episodes, Crushes, F/M, Harvelle's Roadhouse (Supernatural), No Smut, One Shot, Secret Crush, Slow Burn, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-31 13:27:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18592171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsfreerealestate/pseuds/itsfreerealestate
Summary: Takes place after s2x4 (Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things). Dean stops by the Roadhouse while Sam is getting bandaged after breaking his wrist. Jo is putting together a file on a hunt without her mother’s watchful eye, desperate to escape her whiskey-lined prison. Dean tries to convince her otherwise. It doesn’t work.





	Playing Wonder Woman

**Author's Note:**

> This ship has been long dead, but it's held a place in my heart for over ten years now. My slow return to fic after more than a five-year hiatus. Please be kind.

“So, how long is Sam out of commission?”

He gives her a weak chuckle, nodding the head of his beer bottle toward her. “He’s not exactly dead.”

“Yet, I’m sure,” she chuckles.

Dean tries to pretend that mocking sentiment doesn’t strike him between the ribs, piercing his heart with a fire poker. He hasn’t filled in Jo on everything he and his brother had discovered over the last few weeks regarding Sam’s… _situation_. That said, he isn’t about to start unpacking for the poor girl now. “It’s just a broken hand, that kid snaps back like a rubber band. He’ll be fine.” Bringing his wrist up to check the time, he raises an eyebrow. “Hospital was packed because of some highway crash or something.”

“Highway crash?”

“Typical rubbernecks, I’m assuming.” With one last gulp, he sets the empty bottle down on the bar, where Jo picks it up. Her hand barely misses his in the process, not yet calloused by the horrors of the world they both know exist outside those front doors the way Dean’s had been for over a decade. “Think you can top me off?”

“Think you can pay the tab you still owe us?” Jo spits out at him with a smirk that could make any mother’s stomach churn. Ellen sure has her work cut out for her.

Dean bites his lip, something Jo tries desperately to ignore. “Come on, Jo, can’t you just add it on? Sammy took the card we’re using right now to the ER.”

He then gives Jo the widest doe-eyes she could ever dream of seeing on the man in front of her. So much that it’s almost comical, like they were photoshopped onto a much different model.

With a moment’s ponder, she huffs. “Fine,” she says, tossing him another. Granted, it was their cheapest, so no one was really missing out on anything. “You’re the only one I know who doesn’t care about whatever piss-water is put in front of him.”

“I’m a cheap date.”

“You’re an alcoholic.”

He shrugs. “Same difference.”

Jo rolls her eyes, turning around to grab a manila file folder with a few sticky notes protruding from it. Dean can’t help but let his eyes wander as her blonde hair falls over her face. He can’t tell if he’s peeping more at her, or at the papers. With his life, work and play seem to overlap on hunts more than often. But not with Jo.

“You got a case?” he almost scoffs.

“Not yet. Still putting together the file. But it sounds promising.” Jo doesn’t even look up, her hand absentmindedly flipping some pathetic little pig-sticker of a knife in the process. He has no idea what in the world she’s going to be able to take out with that thing.

“And your mom is totally cool with you hunting?”

His raised eyebrow extends to the tone in his voice, inspiring Jo to look up and meet his gaze.

Horrible decision, really, on her part.

“Nope, and she’s not gonna know until she needs to. Got it?” Her voice is sharp, and for a moment, Dean recognizes Ellen’s control in her tone. He’s almost scared of her tenacity. But just for that moment.

“Fine, fine,” he mutters, “but don’t come crying to me when she shuts it down.”

“The faith you have in me is astounding, Winchester.”

“I live to please.”

Jo has to quite literally bite her own tongue to keep from chuckling at the loaded sexual subtext constantly following Dean’s every word. She has no clue how he manages to do it, but she would be lying if she said he wasn’t smooth when he wanted to be.

Of course, all other times, he’s a hotheaded moron.

He cranes his neck to see some of the file, but Jo quickly snaps it away from his view. “What, you think I’m gonna steal it or something?” _Trust me, I have bigger things to worry about than… is that a clown?_ Dean thinks to himself as he catches a peek of one of the newspaper clippings in the file.

“I’m not taking chances, alright? I worked hard on this.”

“Bet you did. Cover it in stickers and everything?” His teasing is accompanied by a wicked grin that brings a glint to his eye, forcing Jo to notice.

“Ass,” she says as she throws her bar rag at him.

He takes a moment to snatch it from his face, sputtering the dirty condensation falling from the cloth and onto his skin. “Come on, Jo, you’ve got a life here. Business to run, place over your head. Why are you trying to get into this life?”

Placing her hands on the bar and turning to face him, Jo inhales deeply. “Same reason as you. Loyalty. Family. Passion for the hunt. I want to help people, Dean.”

“So go get a medical license. You’ll live longer that way.”

“As if this place is really living, huh?” With a shake of her head, Jo flattens her arms on the bar as she leans down. “It’s what I’m supposed to do. It’s what I _want_ to do, so why can’t I do it? Christ, you sound like my mother.” She turns to head back down to the other side of the bar, grabbing a bottle abandoned by another hunter hours ago. She wonders if that hunter had a mother who tried to drive him out of the job, too.

“Is that such a bad thing?” Dean stands and follows her down, running his hand along the slick wetness of the bar as he does so. “We do this because it took our mom. Then it took our dad. It’s trying to go for more.” He refuses to delve too much into the story of what was happening with Sam and his visions, out of fear of word spreading to other hunters. “We do this because we didn’t have a choice. You do. And you’re choosing wrong.”

“How noble of you.”

“You’re gonna get yourself killed, Jo.”

“I’d like to see them try.” Her grin could cure cancer, it’s so optimistic. Far too optimistic for Dean’s comfort level.

“All I’m saying is, be smart about it. Don’t do something stupid just because you wanna play Wonder Woman.”

“And you don’t think I’d kill that suit, huh? Whip and all.”

Now _Dean_ would be lying if he said he wouldn’t be stocking _that_ image in his head for later. “It was a lasso.”

“Why do you even know that?” Jo chuckles, coming around the other side of the bar to sit in a stool nearby him and rest her aching feet. With a groan, she leans her head on the bar, feeling her back stretch as she pushes into the arch of her spine.

At the sight of that blonde doing that movement in her damned low-cut and form-fitting shirt, Dean feels himself twitch gently within his jeans and curses to himself to pull it together.

“I’m just sick of it here. She keeps me pent up like a dog. Why should I hold myself back just because she’s afraid?”

“She’s afraid _for_ you, Jo. She doesn’t want you to get hurt. None of us do.”

The last line comes out before his tongue can bite it back, and Jo certainly notices. “I won’t. You think a little spirit is gonna keep me down?” Pushing her boundaries of how far to push Dean, she places a palm against his cheek and pats it lightly. “I’m a big girl, Winchester.”

With a swallow, Dean stares up at her in silence. Wound around her finger like a string.

The sound of a strong guitar riff breaks the stillness between them, and Jo bites her lip with a smile, thankful for the interruption. She’d rather not do something she would regret later just because she’s sad and lonely at the bar.

Dean picks up his phone, calling out, “Sammy?” He stands to turn around, and Jo leaves him to discuss things with his brother. After a moment, she hears the phone snap shut and he suddenly returns to her side. Pulling his wallet, he pulls out a twenty and shoves it in the front pocket of her apron.

Jo laughs and tries to protest. “Dean, you know I don’t actually—"

“Then don’t tell your mom and consider it a tip. Buy yourself a new knife,” he chuckles as he turns to grab his jacket from the barstool nearby.

“You coming back around anytime soon?” she asks, though she knows he won’t give her an answer.

He shrugs, confirming her thoughts. “Depends on what the wind brings.”

_Don’t do it, Jo. Don’t you dare do it. Let him walk out, he’s not worth the trouble of wondering when he’ll call afterwards._

“One for the road,” she says against her better judgment, handing him a cold beer from the fridge below the bar.

“Now you’re promoting drunk driving. Shame, shame, Harvelle.” He laughs but takes the beer from her anyway.

“We both know you’re more of a tank than any officer will ever know.”

Dean slips on his jacket, neither confirming nor denying her statement. “Tell your mom I said hi, ‘kay?”

Jo nods, frustrated with how disappointed she gets when he leaves.

“You’ll call?”

“Always do.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much. I may be continuing little one-shots like this in a series. Who knows, with these two.


End file.
